Launch keys

In his lab on the third floor of the Merkert Center, Professor Marc Snapper (chemistry), opens a wide, shallow drawer and plucks out what looks like a plain round piece of white paper to demonstrate his big idea. It is actually a sheet of filter paper, which he is using as a model for cotton (both materials are made of cellulose, an organic compound). The idea is to fashion what he calls “Smart First Aid Fabrics,” including articles of clothing that would automatically release therapeutic agents (to prevent infection, for example) in the presence of blood. He pictures athletes, soldiers, hikers, and others donning these smart clothes.

But there’s a barrier that Snapper needs to push aside, before he lines up significant funding for what will be an ambitious multiyear project. “We need to show that we could do this, at least in principle,” the chemistry professor says. And to get the initial supporting data, he needs funding that granters such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) are reluctant to award at this early stage.

There is, in other words, a funding gap for potentially consequential but preliminary research. Stepping into this void at Boston College is a new initiative called Ignite, which offers seed money for pilot projects by faculty members from various disciplines.

The aim is to give selected faculty quick access to funds that will help them get the test data needed for much larger grants, notably from the NSF and the National Institutes of Health. Snapper’s proposal for smart fabrics was one of five projects awarded up to $30,000 this past summer, during the first round of Ignite grants (there are three cycles of grant-making planned for each academic year). He’s using the money to buy materials and pay undergraduate research assistants.

Nationally, competition for research grants has become fiercer than ever, largely because of waning or stagnating federal funds for that purpose, says Thomas C. Chiles, Boston College’s DeLuca Chair in Biology and the University’s vice provost for research and academic planning. “You have to have preliminary data for those grants, and you can’t just pull the money out of the air to do this research,” he said, underscoring the need for a funding mechanism such as Ignite. “For Boston College faculty to be competitive for grants, we have to move those ideas forward, sooner.”

“Sooner” is no small part of the emphasis. An Ignite grant arrives no later than two months after the deadline for proposals, which are externally reviewed by specialists in the faculty members’ fields. “If I have an idea, and it takes me nine months to move it forward, I’m behind the curve. I’m not competitive, because somebody else is going to do it,” Chiles explains.

For his part, Snapper says he and his team are racing to forge a linker, or chemical building block, that would keep therapeutic agents “immobilized” on the fabric until bleeding occurs, at which point the medicines would cleave to the wound and help control bleeding, relieve pain, and/or stave off infection. “We could be scooped tomorrow,” he acknowledges, referring to researchers at other institutions who might be on the same trail.

There are four other projects underway in the inaugural round of Ignite funding. Graduate School of Social Work assistant professor Jessica Black, an educational neuroscientist, is developing an online survey for young people who have, or are at risk of having, learning disabilities. The responses will help her and co-researchers devise further tests using an MRI scanner to better understand disabilities’ neurological underpinnings. Biology professor Charles Hoffman is testing a new method of discovering drug-like compounds that aid in the study of cellular signaling, the process by which cells communicate with and respond to one another. Lynch School of Education professors G. Michael Barnett and David Blustein are evaluating the use of robotics to teach science and technology to minority students.

For an interdisciplinary project, assistant professor of sociology Brian J. Gareau and earth and environmental sciences lecturer Tara Pisani Gareau (they’re husband and wife) are studying the effects of climate change on the Massachusetts cranberry industry and what growers are doing or can do to ameliorate those effects.

Under the Ignite guidelines, each proposal must throw light on potential societal contributions of the research, in addition to the scholarly or scientific significance. In the case of the Gareaus, they are seeking to help bolster what Brian Gareau refers to as a “cultural icon of Massachusetts,” the cranberry.

The two researchers point out that climate change is threatening cranberry yields in multiple ways. For example, warmer springs are causing buds to swell earlier, making them more vulnerable to frost; hotter, drier summers are leading farmers to use more groundwater for irrigation, which has sparked tension in some communities. The result is that the cranberry crop is “in jeopardy of local extinction,” says Tara Gareau.

Her office on the second floor of Devlin Hall offers signs of the research underway. There’s a soil-core sampling tool standing in a corner (it looks like a pogo stick with one of the foot stands missing), along with a white pail half-filled with soil near her desk. Most of the pair’s hands-on research takes them to cranberry bogs on Cape Cod and in Plymouth County, where they might examine the surrounding ecosystem, including the diversity and abundance of bees. The social-science part might involve talking to farmers about their incomes and yields and what they’re doing to stay afloat economically (which could include opening a cranberry-bog bed and breakfast).

Another requirement of those seeking an Ignite grant is that they outline “a clear path” to obtaining external funding, says Welkin Johnson, the biology professor who manages the program. The Gareaus have a specific path in mind: an NSF grant-making initiative called the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems Program, which for more than 13 years has been supporting interdisciplinary research about the effects of nature and human beings on each other. “It’s a great program,” Brian Gareau notes, “but you have to have great data to show you know what you’re doing.”